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PINELANDS TO GET TAX AID IF HIGHLANDS BILL PASSES Date: 040608 From: http://www.phillyburbs.com/ By Kathleen Cannon, Burlington County Times, June 8, 2004 Trenton - A measure that protects a northern New Jersey watershed and that pumps extra aid into the already preserved Pinelands finally is moving through the Legislature. Stalled for two weeks, the bill creating a Pinelands-like preservation zone in the Highlands region in seven northern counties was released from two committees yesterday, one each in the Senate and Assembly. It is now scheduled for a vote in the full Senate on Thursday with a full Assembly vote to follow within weeks. Under the bill, development will be curtailed in the environmentally pristine core of the 800,000-acre Highlands, the source of drinking water for nearly half the state. "This significant vote today puts us one step closer to another shining moment in New Jersey's longstanding history of environmental protection," Gov. James E. McGreevey said in a statement. To advance the measure, backers were forced to deal with a southern New Jersey senator. Sen. Steve Sweeney, D-3rd of Thoroughfare, a key member of the Senate Environment Committee where the bill was stuck until yesterday, won in exchange for his yes vote state aid to stabilize property taxes in Pinelands towns and language ensuring southern New Jersey farmland preservation efforts would not be jeopardized. Specifically, the Highlands bill provides $1.8 million annually for five years for up to 32 Pinelands towns to relieve property-tax hikes. Sweeney also is seeking to make that aid permanent. The senator said he is negotiating with McGreevey over the terms of a separate bill that would provide up to $21 million in extra aid to fast-growing school districts in the Pinelands, Highlands, and elsewhere in the state. Such districts deserve extra aid because they are the unwilling recipients of tremendous growth triggered by state preservation efforts, Sweeney said. "At this point, we've got the bill as good as we're going to get it," he said. But Sweeney and McGreevey administration officials denied yesterday his yes vote was also tied to talks over yet another initiative that would streamline regulations and encourage redevelopment in cities and older suburbs. Details on that bill are still in flux. An administration source said such an effort is a logical bookend to a Highlands preservation bill that removes hundreds of thousands of acres from the state's inventory of developable land. Environmentalists are watching the horse-trading with concern; they don't want the Highlands protected at the cost of watering down environmental safeguards elsewhere in the state. "Any number of things can jeopardize the integrity of the bill," said David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation.